ra Wild around to pick out which of my three kidney sofas she
wants for a wedding present. That girl I've got isn't much good, and
besides, I think there's a chance that Dora may give me her house to do.
Her man's stupidly rich, they say, and richly stupid, so the job ought
to be worth eating a cold egg for."

You'd have known them for mother and daughter anywhere, and you'd have
had trouble finding any point of resemblance in either of them to the
Amazonian young thing who had so nearly thrown a street-car conductor
into the street the night before. Their foreheads were both narrow and
rather high, their noses small and slightly aquiline, and both of them
had slender fastidious hands.

The mother's hair was very soft and white, and the care with which it
was arranged indicated a certain harmless vanity in it. There was
something a little conscious, too, about her dress--an effect difficult
to describe without exaggeration. It was not bizarre nor "artistic," but
you would have understood at once that its departures from the
prevailing mode were made on principle. If you took it in connection
with a certain resolute amiability about her smile, you would be
entirely prepared to hear her tell Portia that she was reading a paper
on Modern Tendencies before the Pierian Club this afternoon.

A very real person, nevertheless, you couldn't doubt that. The marks of
passionately held beliefs and eagerly given sacrifices were etched with
undeniable authenticity in her face.

Once you got beyond a catalogue of features, Portia presented rather a
striking contrast to this. Her hair was done--you could hardly say
arranged--with a severity that was fairly hostile. Her clothes were
bruskly cut and bruskly worn, their very smartness seeming an impatient
concession to necessity. Her smile, if not ill-natured--it wasn't
that--was distinctly ironic. A very competent, good-looking young woman,
you'd have said, if you'd seen her with her shoulder-blades flattened
down and her chest up. Seeing her to-day, drooping a little over the
cold lunch, you'd have left out the adjective young.

"So Rose didn't come down this morning at all," Portia observed, when
she had done her duty by the egg. "You took her breakfast up to her, I
suppose."

Mrs. Stanton flushed a little. "She didn't want me to; but I thought
she'd better keep quiet."

"Nothing particular the matter with her, is there?" asked Portia.

There was enough real concern in her voi